Every now and then that “be faithful to him so long as you both shall live” thing takes on an unexpected dimension, like it did recently when 28-year-old Amber Watford saw her man handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser after being arrested for failure to show up to court-ordered DUI classes. While the state trooper was distracted, and without a moments hesitation, she jumped in and sped away, leaving the police officer with his head spinning on a swivel!

Despite the use of a police dog and a helicopter, the search came up empty. Finally, someone called in a tip that led police to the couple who were arrested for vehicle theft and criminal mischief.

APPLICATION

How many women do you know who are willing to steal a state trooper’s cruiser for their man? In reality, it's clear that this wife is actually a really BIG part of her husband's problems!

Wouldn’t her commitment to her marriage be more productively lived out by encouraging hubby to do the little things, like...hmmmm, I don't know...attending court ordered DUI classes and not resisting arrest?

While this is obviously an extreme case, many of us tend to engage in unhealthy, codependent behavior in countless more subtle ways every day by enabling our loved one's unhealthy habits or behaviors.

We've all experienced the frustration of missing socks. Foolishly, perhaps, we usually attribute their disappearance to the clothes dryer having "eaten" them. But maybe we should be pointing our fingers elsewhere, like toward our four-footed, furry friends. USA Today reports:

Chomping down on 43 1/2 socks was enough to make one 3-year-old Great Dane pretty sick. After vomiting and retching during the day, abdominal radiographs revealed "a severely distended stomach and a large quantity of foreign material," according to Veterinary Practice News.

During surgery performed by a ... veterinarian in Portland, Ore., the socks were removed. The dog was sent home one day after surgery.

When Dr. Ashley Magee at the Animal Hospital opened the dogs stomach, she told KGW-TV, they "kept removing sock after sock of all different shapes and sizes."

The Dane, who had a history of sock snitching, has been in for follow-up check-ups and is so far doing fine. Needless to say, the Dane's "people" are keeping a watchful eye to see that he doesn't return to his former ways.

APPLICATION

43 1/2 socks! Makes you wonder what happened to the other 1/2 of that 44th one. Maybe he just couldn't choke it down.

It just goes to show, we all have our limits. If that's true of socks, you better believe it's true of sins. We may seem to tolerate them well enough for a while, but watch out for that 44th one. Eventually our transgressions catch up to us, and when they do, there we are retching and vomiting all over everything.

"As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly" (Proverbs 26:11).

That's equal to 5.9% of all deaths across the planet, or more than one in 20.

"This actually translates into one death every 10 seconds," says a WHO rep.

The report encompasses drunk driving, alcohol-induced violence and abuse, and related diseases and disorders ("the harmful use of alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions," per the report).

APPLICATION

We'd never think of sticking someone with an AIDs infected needle, blowing tuberculin spores into someone's lungs, or shooting them with a gun. No doubt, we'd consider such acts as criminal. In fact, we'd hopefully intervene if we saw anyone perpetrating any of the the above crimes.

So why do we stand idly by and watch as our loved ones, neighbors, and friends succumb to the violent assault of alcohol abuse? We must stop enabling and start intervening if we have any hope of reversing these staggering statistics, keeping in mind, these "statistics" are not just numbers. They have names, and they have sons and daughters and spouses and parents and ...